Playful bubble time

STOCKTON - Fusion Boba Café's offers a playful and varied menu that mixes flavors and serves it up quick for the lunch and breakfast crowd in downtown Stockton.

The Record

STOCKTON - Fusion Boba Café's offers a playful and varied menu that mixes flavors and serves it up quick for the lunch and breakfast crowd in downtown Stockton.

And it's a lot more than just an assortment of bubble teas, though there is a wide selection of cold fruit or tea drinks that come submerged orbs of tapioca.

Located on Hunter Square next to the Courthouse Building, the newly-opened Fusion Boba had a bustling lunch crowd when a group of us from The Record dropped in for a meal.

The café's Fusion Bun section pushes the fusion envelope. Each of the three selections offers a different meat inside the spongy bun you might find wrapped around flavored pork in a dimsum restaurant. We didn't order the pulled pork with the mango BBQ sauce or the Italian Steam Bun with ham and salami. We opted for the Chicken with Special Peanut Sauce bun ($5.25 for three buns.)

In appearance, this looked like a fusion soft taco. Instead of encasing the meat, the fresh and chewy bun was flat and folded around the chicken. The subtle peanut flavor of the sweet sauce coated the chicken. The julienned carrots and daikon radish added a freshness in flavor and a crispiness to the texture that made this order work.

The fusion continued, since the buns, like all our lunch orders, came with a small bag of chips. Perhaps the culinary whiplash of choosing a bag of Cheetos was too much for us, but we still picked Sun Chips to nibble on while we waited for our food, which was not long.

We were able to try the pulled pork on a tender and tasty sandwich ($6.75) with a sweet, but not-overwhelming flavor. For those keeping track of the fusion points, the sandwich was served on ciabatta bread from Genova, Stockton's Italian bakery.

For the less adventurous crowd that is looking for a solid sandwich, there's the chicken panini ($6.95). It's not bland, but lacked "oomph."

Served on ciabatta bread and filled with grilled chicken breast, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato and pesto sauce, the sandwich had fresh ingredients and the pesto sauce wasn't overwhelming, which can be a problem with pesto. We wouldn't have minded a little more time in the panini press, and $7 seemed a little expensive compared to subs found nearby.

Several salads on the menu caught our eye. We went with the chicken harvest salad ($7.45) - a generous assortment of mixed greens with chopped walnuts, dried cranberries, slices of apple and diced chicken. The ingredients were lightly tossed in a raspberry vinaigrette - a little too lightly, but the counter help was happy to provide additional dressing. The salad was fresh and tasty, and it came with two slices of sourdough.

Good, but we had order envy when we saw our neighbor enjoying the avocado crab salad ($6.95).

We couldn't resist trying out Fusion Boba's specialty dessert. The Snowflake lies somewhere between ice cream and a shaved ice, and it comes with an array of options for toppings and flavors.

We got a large mango-flavored Snowflake ($5.75), with fresh strawberry slices, white chocolate sauce and tiny "popping boba" that burst with lychee flavor. More sweet than creamy, it blended the flavors nicely. In all, a refreshing finish to a meal that doesn't sit as heavy as an ice cream sundae.

Fusion Boba Café is in the same location as the short-lived Parker's Alley Café, so it has all the same amenities, with outside seating and an airy, well-lighted interior. There's also private meeting rooms for those looking to have a business lunch. With espresso drinks on tap and a menu that includes donuts and oatmeal, those meetings could happen at breakfast, too.

We only dipped a toe into the fusion waters of the new café, but we think we'd come back for another plunge.